Product Description

Castle Rackrent, a novel by Maria Edgeworth published in 1800, is often regarded as the first true historical novel and the first true regional novel in English.
It is also widely regarded as the first family saga, and the first novel to use the device of a narrator who is both unreliable and an observer of, rather than a player in, the actions he chronicles.

This volume also includes Ennui, the entertaining confessions' of the Earl of Glenthorn, a bored, spoiled aristocrat. Desperate to be free from the demon of ennui, Glenthorn's quest for happiness takes him through violence and revolution, and leads to intriguing twists of fate. Both novels offer a darkly comic and satirical expose of the Irish class system, and a portrait of a nation in turmoil.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #735390 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-30
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
MARIA EDGEWORTH was born in 1768. Her first novel, Castle Rackrent (1800) was also her first Irish tale. The next such tale was Ennui (1809), after which came The Absentee, which began life as an unstaged play and was then published (in prose) in Tales of Fashionable Life (1812), as were several of her other stories. They were followed in 1817 by the last of her Irish tales, Ormond. Maria Edgeworth died in 1849. Edited with an introduction and notes by Marilyn Butler

Customer Reviews

Amazingly wonderful
Maria Edgeworth was a pioneer Irish writer who was justifiably popular about 200 years ago, and whose work continues to be read with great pleasure to this day. Ennui is a masterpiece of humorous satire, brilliantly phrased in the way only great literature can be. To read Edgeworth is to find a "new" author of the caliber of Fielding, Dickens, Hardy, or Scott. Her style is more entertaining and pithy than any of these. The topics she writes about are of universal interest and lack nothing in the way of contemporary applicability. Human nature quite obviously has not changed in two centuries, and is unlikely to change in two more - when her books are likely still to be read. Give Edgeworth's work a try, you are almost certain to have a wonderful experience.

Not bedtime reading.
Edgeworth wrote about the protestant upper class in Ireland around the turn of the 18th/19th century. At the time, especially in Rackrent, her most famous work, she wrote of the machinations of bad landlords and how their families died out. It is interesting that she was writing about the demise of these bad landlords, suggesting that things had improved in this more enlightened age, at a time when the Irish Peasant was worse off than ever. Edgeworth wrote of a society that was on the brink of extinction, but she was not aware of this, since she was part of that society. This book is noteworthy for what it is not. It is not Irish literature. It is poor british literature and would have no merit at all if it did not serve to contrast with the high quality scribblings of the uneducated and unwashed downtrodden masses. Like the protestant ruling class it is sparse, stilted and haughty. Not a fun read.